Beings from space arrive in England, calling themselves Axons. They bring
with them a fantastic substance called Axonite which can affect the
structure of matter. The Axons offer to exchange the Axonite with the
various world powers, but the Doctor discovers there is something sinister
about the aliens -- not the least of which is their secret allegiance with
the Master.

Production

Bob Baker and Dave Martin had both held a variety of jobs before getting
into writing for television in the late Sixties. One of Baker's skills was
animation, and the pair -- who would become known as “the Bristol
Boys” -- tried to interest the BBC in this material. Soon
thereafter, they began writing plays for telecast, and developed a sitcom
entitled A Man's Life, the script for which ended up on the desk of
Doctor Who script editor Terrance Dicks. Dicks, his assistant
Trevor Ray, and producers Derrick Sherwin and Peter Bryant met with Baker
and Martin and asked the duo to submit an idea for Doctor Who.

The storyline conceived by Baker and Martin was a seven-part adventure
featuring Patrick Troughton's then-current Second Doctor, entitled
“The Gift”. It involved evil aliens who land in Hyde Park in a
skull-shaped spacecraft, and featured spaceship battles and even a giant
carrot crashing into the park. “The Gift” was scaled back to
six installments by the time the script for episode one was commissioned
on December 1st, 1969, by which point Jon Pertwee had been cast as the new
Doctor. However, the script was not submitted to the production office
until April 6th, 1970 -- more than three months past the original delivery
date of January 2nd -- and failed to meet the approval of incoming
producer Barry Letts. Letts felt that “The Gift” was too much
of a jumble of ideas, and was unhappy with the skull spaceship image. The
script also seemed to overestimate what could be accomplished on the
limited Doctor Who budget.

The writers wanted to exploit the idea of aliens who seem
philanthropic but secretly scheme to destroy the Earth

After talking things over with Dicks on the 6th, Baker and Martin received
a commission for a revised version of the storyline, now called “The
Friendly Invasion”. This time around, the pair sought to exploit the
idea of the aliens appearing to be philanthropic while secretly scheming
to destroy the Earth. However, Letts and Dicks still felt that “The
Friendly Invasion” was too full of disparate ideas and Dicks
thereafter worked closely with the writers to rein in their
exuberance.

Baker and Martin were also asked to insert the Master into their
storyline. This character had been designed by Letts and Dicks to be the
Doctor's new archfoe, and was being included in every story of Doctor
Who's eighth season. Baker was displeased with this remit, as he did
not feel that the Master fit well in the established plot. The adventure's
title became “The Axons” at about this stage; this was the
name of the evil aliens, which was inspired by the term for the nerve
fibre along which neurological impulses are carried. The serial's length
was also pared back to four episodes. By this time, it was thought that
“The Axons” would be the third story of Season Eight, earning
the production code GGG.

The script for part one was commissioned on September 11th, followed by
part two on October 18th and the remaining installments on the 29th. It
was Dicks' idea that the interior of Axos should appear organic rather
than man-made, and that Axos would drain the life out of the surrounding
countryside. The use of Axonite was to have been demonstrated using a rat
instead of a toad; the scripts also indicated that Winser's first name was
Malcolm.

In mid-December, the title was changed again to “The Vampire From
Space”. This was felt to be more Doctor Who-ish, although the
production office was not happy with the term “vampire” being
used. Michael Ferguson was assigned to direct the story, having most
recently worked on the programme on The Ambassadors
Of Death one year earlier. It was decided that Fernanda Marlowe
would reprise the role of Corporal Bell which she had originated in the
previous serial in production, The Mind Of
Evil. Bell replaced a scripted “UNIT R/T Man”; this
would be the character's second and final appearance.

All location work on Serial GGG took place in Kent, beginning on January
4th, 1971 at Dengemarsh Road in Lydd for some roadside scenes. More of
these, as well as all the Axos exterior material, was recorded on the 5th
and 6th at nearby Dungeness Road. Yet more road sequences, most notably
the fight between Yates and Benton and the Axons, were then filmed on the
7th at St Martin's Plain Camp in Shorncliffe. January 8th took cast and
crew to the Dungeness ‘A’ Nuclear Power Station in Dungeness,
which served as the Nuton Power Complex.

Terrance Dicks had to amend the script to explain the
highly inconsistent weather

Frustratingly, the weather proved highly variable throughout the five-day
shoot, ranging from snow at the start of the week, through fog and finally
to sunshine on the final day. To explain the inconsistency, Dicks assigned
a new line of dialogue to Corporal Bell which noted that Axos' arrival had
prompted “freak weather conditions”. Some model filming was
also completed for the story.

The first studio session took place on Friday, January 22nd and Saturday
the 23rd in BBC Television Centre Studio 3. These two days were used
exclusively for scenes from the first two episodes, with material set in
UNIT HQ and the Mobile HQ recorded on the Friday, and the remainder of the
material scheduled for the Saturday. This included the debut of the new
TARDIS console, designed by Kenneth Sharp. The original had been tinted
light green to show up better as white on monochrome videotape, but was no
longer suitable now that Doctor Who was being broadcast in
colour. It had also been badly damaged over its seven years of
service.

Unfortunately, complicated effects work meant that time ran out on the
final scenes of part two, set in the Nuton Complex. These had to be
rescheduled for the second recording block, which occurred exactly two
weeks later on February 5th and 6th, albeit in TC4 this time. The Friday
was dedicated to episode three (as well as the remaining material from
part two), while episode four scenes were taped on the Saturday. The
serial's title also underwent one final evolution at this time, to The
Claws Of Axos. The late change meant that the opening credit sequences
for the first two installments had to be rerecorded on the 6th, and the
original title was inadvertently retained on some overseas prints as
well as in most of the story's publicity material.

The Claws Of Axos was the last of Michael Ferguson's four
directorial outings on Doctor Who. He went on to helm episodes of
programmes such as Colditz before becoming a producer, with credits
including The Sandbaggers, EastEnders and
Casualty.

Sources

Doctor Who: The Handbook: The Third Doctor by David J Howe and
Stephen James Walker (1996), Virgin Publishing, ISBN 0 426 20486 7.